Birds
I.
There is a bird in my throat that hurts--
small swallow with a tender belly.
Its beak opens as a prelude
to the warble that does not come.
There is no song there is barely escape.
II.
Tell me about the field beyond the house,
how geese hide in the tall grass before
we wake. At dawn I am drying a plate
when I see them pull hollow bones
together and out past the grove of beech trees.
One day the ground may burn,
our bed and books cinder before that fire,
and the geese all flown to safety—
another field of grass, another grove of trees.
III.
You came into me with a mess
of feathers and squall,
amazed as a bird with a foot in the trap.
Music in your sleeping chest,
dark in the August night—
hard like a bird in the window, glass streaked
with blood, traces of the wrong way in:
the sound grows until the room is filled
with this screeching,
this deafening shroud of birds.
IV.
I take the dying sparrow,
definition molting in my hands,
feathers bound by muscle and bone.
Here, the broken line of wing
—here, a running song
still sweet in the throat.
Oh, southward migration knowledge
of the poles years flown through leaves
and nights sheltered against gale winds.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
I. I love the imagery here. "a bird in my throat that hurts,"
ReplyDeleteis really powerful--it initially makes me think of a few things:
having a "frog" in one's throat, but something a little different,
because birds remind me more of butterflies (owing to their wings).
Birds are an image of liberty and freedom to me (flying free like
a bird, so-to-speak), so to say that there is a bird caught in someone's
throat says many things. If I were to run with the bird/butterfly image,
it seems as though the bird is to symbolize something hopeful. But considering
this hopeful image is caught in a throat casts a sinister shade on it.
This is underlined by the fact that the bird does not sing, and that
there is barely any escape for it.
II. The image of the geese moving to a safer place, from the place
where fire happens between the speaker and the "you" is really poignant.
It signifies strife between the speaker and whomever the other person is.
I feel as if there was a sweetness between the two; perhaps they were lovers,
but now it seems as though even the geese have lost faith in them.
III. This piece tries to describe the other figure, but the speaker is only able
to describe the person in chaotic terms. The other person is not necessesarily
themselves chaotic, however, the combination of the two people is a "mess."
IV. The speaker then takes a bird that is dying, and with its death its definition
seems to fall apart. This last part is a little harder to understand,
but it does seem to be the pinnacle of the poem. A migration is mentioned,
an inner knowledge of nature...Maybe this migration is of the other person
from the speaker.